Scary Movie 3 (2003)

Ring of Signs

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

As with Scary Movie parts one and two, you pays your money, you gets your laughs, and you won't remember a thing in a few months.

Scary Movie 3 riffs on recent sci-fi and horror films, such as The Ring, Signs and The Matrix sequels. By compressing these three movies into one 84-minute extravaganza, it all flies by pretty fast and nothing really sticks.

Anna Faris, who played the ditzy blond actress in Lost in Translation, stars as a ditzy blond TV reporter who watches the dreaded videotape that will cost her her life in 7 days. Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen and Simon Rex play farmers who discover crop circles warning them of an alien attack. Rex is also a white rapper who performs in an 8 Mile-style freestyle contest. He and Faris make up the film's tentative romantic subplot.

Tons of other stars appear in fleeting roles. Denise Richards plays Sheen's wife who dies in a car crash; Anthony Anderson appears as Rex's buddy from the 'hood. Queen Latifah spoofs the "Oracle" and Eddie Griffin takes on Orpheus from The Matrix while George Carlin makes fun of one of the more confusing scenes from that film's sequel. Regina Hall, D.L. Hughley, Camryn Manheim and a bunch of pop and rap stars (Method Man, Redman, The RZA, Macy Gray etc.) appear in cameos. Best of all, Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy wear skimpy schoolgirl outfits in the film's throwaway opening scene.

This third film was directed by David Zucker, one of the three men who invented this kind of spoof with the Airplane! and Naked Gun films, and in a stroke of genius, he casts Leslie Nielsen as a clueless President of the United States. Nielsen even gets to re-create one of his more bizarre jokes from the early Airplane!.

Of course, the subtlety of that movie is gone; nothing is left to chance in the 21st century, and everything must be telegraphed and explained. Nevertheless, I laughed at the sheer speed and recklessness of Scary Movie 3 even if I can't remember what I laughed at.

Dimension's DVD comes with an audio commentary track by Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss and writers Pat Proft and Craig Mazin. It features a "real" making-of documentary and a "fake" one, plus bloopers and outtakes (featuring the original Hulk meets A Beautiful Mind ending) as well as an optional French language track and Spanish subtitles.

In 2005, Miramax/Dimension released a second, unrated version of Scary Movie 3, called Scary Movie 3.5. The movie is only about one minute longer, and I was unable to tell what the new footage was, though I suspect that Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy may have some extra moments. The extras are the same as on the previous disc, except for some new deleted scenes.

In 2011, Lionsgate released a Blu-Ray edition, with the "unrated" cut, and the same extras as the 2005 disc.